1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a manipulator used to control a robot along at least six axes, also called syntaxor, which permits advanced control of a robot such as, for example, a welding robot carried by gantry, having six degrees of freedom or a painting robot having more than six degrees of freedom, with a certain redundancy of axes.
2. Description of the Prior Art
From an ergonomic viewpoint, it is evident that any human being can operate with ease in a trihedron of rectangular axes with regard to displacement, and in a trihedron of orthogonal rotation axes with regard to orientation. The problem is to develop a manipulator making it possible to act with only one hand on a six-axes robot, and permitting any combination of movements between displacements and orientations. In programming a robot, the operator is particularly concerned with the tip of the tool or with a surface element related to the tool. It is this element that is referred to as the terminal of the robot. In order to facilitate the work of the operator, it is important that the movements of the terminal of the controlled robot be made in relation to the natural frame of reference of the piloting human, whatever the robot's configuration: be it, for example a robot of the Cartesian type with six axes in which the displacements are translations, or a six-axes robot in which the displacements are rotations. The operator intuitively executes rotation movements by rotating the hand in the wrist, while rectilinear movements are effected by displacing the forearm.